


In Which Pillows Are Mentioned & Nightmares Are Not

by Rubynye



Category: Star Trek XI
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-22
Updated: 2010-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-13 23:25:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for <a href="http://syredronning.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://syredronning.livejournal.com/"><b>syredronning</b></a>: "Pike/Number One/Kirk - pillows"<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	In Which Pillows Are Mentioned & Nightmares Are Not

**Author's Note:**

  * For [syredronning](https://archiveofourown.org/users/syredronning/gifts).



There's something bitterly ironic, caustic down the back of Pike's throat, in his wish that Barnett's call had provided an excuse not to return to bed. Especially when his bed currently contains two of the most beautiful people in the known universe, nude and tousled and warmly asleep. They've probably fallen together into the space Pike left -- Jim's a cuddler, and though One isn't she tolerates it from them -- and he uses the promise of that image to pull him back from his study towards his bedroom.

It's just that all the edges are fuzzed with midnight unreality, the hallways of his own house dim and clouded with _jamais vu_ , and a buckled seam in his brain insists that instead of clean desert air he smells the dank, coppery humidity of the _Narada_ , that instead of Jim's sleeping arm across his chest he's back beneath the broad strap fastening him to that metal slab, that he's only hallucinating this place and time and planet.

Pike pauses, pressing his palm to the smooth painted wall, and because no one's there to see him he presses his forehead against it too, just briefly. The nightmare woke him but he came out of it aware, holding himself rigidly still rather than flinching, steadying his heartbeat by their sleeping breathing each side of him. His console's beeped summons was an excuse to gently shift from under Jim's tangling limbs, to murmur a few quieting words as they both stirred, to get up. It was a relief.

It's been five years but Pike still remembers when Jim snuck into Starfleet Medical for a midnight visit, and how afterwards they both inadvisably fell asleep, until Jim draped that strong young arm across him and he woke up reflexes-first, breaking Jim's wrist before he was even conscious. Pike still remembers Jim's eyes, huge and young and sheened with pain, above his broad sweet smile as he shrugged, cradling his wrist in his hand.

He leans against one blameless wall, staring at the one across as he thinks of One six months later, teasing him dryly for his home furnishings, stepping up behind him when he was lost in thought, and how the sting in his knuckles was his first realization that he'd reflexively punched her. She'd looked up at him, hand over one eye and infinite compassion in the other, and had explained his own reaction to him, had refused to blame him when he blamed himself. She was why he stopped simply marking time with the counselor after having been told it was too late for simple memory ablation.

But he's done the work, just as he did in PT, it's been five years, and he almost can't remember the last time he dreamt of the _Narada_. Refusing to hypothesize uselessly about why these particular bad memories chose to rear up now, when for the first time in far too long both Jim and One can spare the same few short days, Pike gives his head a sharp shake and continues back to his bedroom to watch his lovers sleep even if he can't himself.

He doesn't find them as he left them. For one thing, One's eyes shine alertly, sapphire in the bedside lamplight; for another, she's comfortably pillowed on Jim's belly, her hair a glorious dark tumble across his torso, with Jim in turn stretched out along the headboard at right angles to One's statuesque curves. He peeps from under his lashes in a mischievous glint of eyes, then shuts them and fakes sleep with merry incompetence, and she draws up one ivory knee, lying pale and warm down the center of his bed.

Pike takes in this tableau with a deep breath and a palpable unknotting in his chest, and asks, "Where are my pillows?"

"I prefer this one," she says crisply, hand flung back against Jim's thigh. She'd teased Pike, then and recently, for his soft pillows and quilts. Jim smirks on the far side of his pretty face, flopping his hand down so his fingertips touch hers.

"Hardly memory foam," Pike observes, and Jim gives him an upside-down glance of outrage, eyebrows mock-bristling. Pike lavishes a smirk on him -- he's always indulged Jim terribly -- and trades sharp little smiles with One as she extends a gracious hand.

"True, but I like the texture anyway." She slides the other up Jim's thigh; he stretches, rumbling happily as her fingers wrap around him, and Pike kicks out of his trousers with reasonable grace considering he can't tear his eyes away from the spectacle before him. One's smile widens, her cheek curving velvetly and Jim's eyelashes flutter as he rocks his hips up into her hold.

To say nothing of the year Pike spent relearning how to walk, but those days are past, and this is now, One's grip true and tangible as her fingers mesh with his, as Jim says with blithe superfluity, "You know what? I don't think I'm sleepy after all."

* *** * 

Much later, One slides back into bed beside Pike and deliberately wraps her arms around him. She and Jim have connived to tuck him into the middle again, and Jim's curled up beneath his arm as if he weren't two meters of muscle, sinew, and irreverence.

In truth Pike was drifting, satiety a soft haze over his mind and the dreamlike feel cured of its eeriness, but One's firm embrace wakes him a little. "Aren't you going to sleep?" he murmurs, tipping his head back against her shoulder as he glances up.

He gets one glimpse of her warm smile and the strong line of her jaw before she lifts her hand to draw two fingertips down over his eyelids; she shifts beneath and above him, sliding the softness of her breast along his cheek as she asks in return, "Aren't you?"

Jim smiles, cheek creasing over Pike's heart, and he should have known they'd know. He kisses One's wrist and she kisses his eyelids, one and then the other; he nestles his face into Jim's bristle-soft hair, One's lean strength all down his back, and lets the nightmares sink into irrelevance as their reality enfolds him.


End file.
